The report into Troopergate doesn’t disqualify Sarah Palin but it does tarnish her reformist credentials, one of the assets that she was meant to bring to the ticket. The McCain can point to the fact that the report says that “Governor Palin’s firing of Commissioner Monegan was a proper and lawful exercise of her constitutional and statutory authority to hire and fire executive branch department heads.” But its criticism of Palin for “abusing her power” and the portrait it paints of her governorship are damaging.
McCain made several gambles in picking Palin. The biggest was that Palin would be ready for primetime on the biggest political stage of all. After Palin’s impressive speech at the convention, it seemed that this might just pay off. But Palin’s embarrassingly bad performance in the Couric interview reversed much of the good that the speech had done. Another bet was that there was nothing in Troopergate that would hurt the ticket; McCain has lost that bet too.
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